Drive systems for mechanical apparatus often utilize engines or motors in conjunction with gear boxes. The gear boxes include housings, shafts, and gears in combinations which can be quite large and expansive. For example, gear boxes may include multiple gear sets to effect several stage gear reductions or increases in rotating output of shafts. The gears may rotate about a number of orthogonal axes. Motors coupled to the gear boxes further increase the overall size of the drive systems.
Conventional drive systems of gear boxes and motors may present space constraint problems in certain applications. One instance is drive systems for machine tool coolant filtration tanks. These filtration tanks employ conveyor systems to drag out particulate from the bottom of settlement compartments of the filtration tanks. The conveyor systems include a drive shaft and have spaced apart drive sprockets which serve to drive chains and flights of the conveyor system. The flights extend laterally across the width of the tank and carry debris from the tank when the drive shaft is rotated.
Located laterally outside the filtration tanks are drive systems. One common system includes an electric motor having a laterally extending shaft with a pulley thereon connecting with a second pulley coupled to a gear box which drives the chain and flight conveyor. The motor, shafts, pulleys, gearbox, and a safety cover or housing mounted on the side of the settlement tank can be of substantial width.
Filtration tanks may be located below floor level in pits to accommodate the settlement tanks and the drive systems mounted on the sides thereof. It is desirable to limit the size of the pits. The ability to do this is related to minimizing the width of the gear box and motor of the drive system.
Alternatively, a filtration tank may be located above ground and adjacent a wall. Again, to conserve space it is desirable to provide a gear box and motor on the side of the filtration tank which is as narrow in width as possible. This allows the filtration tank to be placed close to the wall.
Another common is that drive systems can be complex and expensive. Often the gear boxes have a large number of gears, pulleys, and shafts which are quite costly. Further, compact gear reduction systems usually do not provide a high gear reduction ratio.
The present invention addresses these short-comings of drive systems utilizing oversized gearboxes which are unnecessarily complex and expensive and which do not provide a high gear reduction ratio.